GOOD READING OCTOBER 2014 53
Speaking of religion, I have none.
Chasing El Dorado is not just a love story
or a Latin American travelogue but also an
existential road trip. Despite being raised as
a strict atheist, I became fixated on gaining a
better understanding of life, the universe and
everything. I became driven to travel from Rio
de Janeiro to the US by bus, boat and donkey –
over the Andes, through the Amazon Jungle and
into the deserts of Mexico. It also became the
narrative arc of my latest
book.
As a result of this
journey, I am today a
reluctant agnostic, happily
wiser knowing that I,
like all of us,
ultimately
know
nothing. I am
still uncomfortable
with the G-word,
but from my time
spent with various
Amerindian
tribes and
shamans, I now have
an appreciation of the
unfathomable – the
multidimensional layer
cake of existence and our
fleeting moment in it.
My struggle to find
meaning in my life,
which ironically resulted
in discovering (and
finding peace in) the
ultimate meaninglessness
of existence, stemmed
from the collective
cultural, spiritual and
environmental decay that
marks our era. I, like
many, suffer the malaise of
modernity, the disconnect
our head-and-gut driven society has from
our hearts. Our focus on logic and scientific
reductionism and what happens in our heads,
together with our insatiable greed for money,
power, food and sex, has totally disconnected
us from our intuition and sense of what is right
in our heart. We’ve also become desensitised
to our neighbours, our brethren of all sentient
life for ms here on this third rock from the sun.
And we have a total disregard for the very
elements of air, earth and water that sustain us.
But don’t get me wrong, I’m no hippie,
despite periods of studying yoga and once
having hair growing down to my waist. No,
I like to fish, eat red
meat, and I’m thinking
of patenting a car bumper
sticker that says, ‘I hunt,
I fish, I vote Green’. Not
that I hunt, but I wouldn’t
be opposed to filling the
freezer with ’roo a couple
of times a year; and I only
vote Green as a protest
to a failing and powerless
political system.
I have, however, been
angry at the way we treat
each other and the world
for a very long time, which
I have expressed in different
ways throughout my life.
In my teens, it was frontline
protesting to help save the
Franklin River. In my
early 20s I got a degree in
environmental science and
then felt despondent at the
hopelessness of it all and
slid into a self-destructive
world of booze, hard drugs
and ’90s grunge rock when
I was a pub musician. I
was unable to self-destruct,
and I emerged from the
haze and a bad marr iage
in my mid-30s, threw it
all to the wind and hit the
road. Now in my mid-40s, I have long since
done away with drugs and self-loathing and
tempered my seething to the wr itten form.
BEHIND THE BOOK
October 2014
main
Viviane and Aaron in costume for
Carnival in Rio.
Aaron at Shipibo Indian spiritual
retreat, Peruvian Amazon.
52_54_behind_book.indd 53
12/09/14 12:27 PM